Ida Applebroog

Artist Ida Applebroog uses a wide variety of media to express themes of struggles within gender and political roles, as well as sexual-identity issues. The publication Scripts is a facsimile of excerpts from one of her personal notebooks containing a compilation of handwritten notes, storyboards, mise-en-scène drawings, and musical notations. Underlining, as well as annotations in different colors, shows that the artist has intensively worked through her notes several times. Some of the fragments on these pages read: «Silences are the undercurrent of all dramatic events.» «Each performance should be more of silence than words.» «Any silence must be punctuated by sound eventually.» For Applebroog, the staged scenes function as «a mode of narration,» and «the narratives are not meant to be truths; the characters simply are.» With only a few words and brief instructions, Applebroog develops stage plays of great dramatic density that she simultaneously comments on, questions, and interprets, thus delivering an insight into her working method.

Ida Applebroog (*1929) is an artist living in New York.

Language: English